


Bones Through Skin

by daisybrien



Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - All Media Types, The Martian - Andy Weir, The Martian - Andy Wier
Genre: Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Multi, Other, Post-Canon, Post-Mars, Post-Rescue, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Room, Sleep, Sleeping Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 10:52:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5124806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisybrien/pseuds/daisybrien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark's return brings enough pain to combat their elation, but they're more than willing to endure it if it means getting to have him again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bones Through Skin

In the dim of their dormitory, Mark looks like nothing more than a ghost to him. 

The room is lit by a measly light in the corner, sending weak beams of light across the floor and barely casting any shadow. Chris is thankful for its weakness, its presence meant more to fend off the tides of uncertainty and fear that had worked its way into his bones after the past few weeks, rather than to fend off the darkness. The room is still dark enough to close his eyes comfortably against the soft, warm glow, be able to fall asleep without it nagging through his eyelids. But even as his eyes burn with lack of sleep, his body aching for rest, the grips of wakefulness refuses to relinquish its hold on him.

Chris spends the night bent awkwardly on the edge of the bed, constantly shifting farther back into it so he doesn’t slip off onto the floor. He ends up further pressing their tangle of limbs together, its intimacy something all had been tentative to initiate in but never wished to deny, and were grateful to have.

The beds in their dormitories were built to hold one person comfortably. It had not been an easy feat to have fit two people, a hesitance in physical intimacy characteristic of a newly dating couple making Beth’s permanent installment in his bed all the more awkward. They had coped, slowly getting used to each other, comfortably making use of the space they had. A third body had completely thrown their equilibrium off, and as easily as Mark’s renewed presence had been as much of an elation as a hassled adjustment to the entire crew, it had been the same to his own occupation of the space between him and Beth.

Mark had come to them in the middle of their nighttime hours, sickly, his medical gown wrapped haphazardly around him. His body was nothing but the frame of a bony phantom, the dark silhouette of a skeleton outlined in the bright fluorescent light of the hallways outside their room, hunched over and shaking. His voice still laughed as he whispered into the darkness for the ‘two lovey-dovey nerds,’ jokingly asking for the doctor’s approval as he slowly slipped his way under the sheets between them. There had been a tremor in that laughter, a cavity formed in his isolation that had filled itself with fear, his body curling into theirs and accepting their warmth like a scared child after a nightmare. Although the third body had left Chris and Beth squished against the walls, almost falling off the edge of the bed, there was no refusing him; not when his body trembled as he fell asleep between the two, brow furrowed deeply, his knuckles growing white as he grips Chris’ nightshirt in his sleep.

There is nothing more for Chris to do during these sleepless hours than to watch them sleep, to ponder in awe of Mark simply of being there beside them, the pathetic weakness of his ragged and starved breath just another welcome yet painful reminder that he is alive. He relishes in it as his eyes trace over Mark’s body, watching as the sallowness in his cheeks and the purple half moons under his eyes move with each twitch, counting the ribs that protrude from under his skin like the rungs of a ladder. He raises one hand to gently trace his jawbone, feels the stubble along the skin stretched taught across bone prickle at his fingertips. His body curls up as if in a defense bestowed unto those who have had to endure endless hell. He still carries that hell with him, in the way he grimaces in his dreams and burrows into Beth’s protective hold. In the glow of the light, his hot and clammy skin almost looks red, as if the dead soil of the lifeless planet had permanently stained him.

A hand reaches for his own, cold and gentle. It is not Mark’s; it is too small, and much meatier and darker than his own, nails bitten brutally short but pristinely clean and soft. It pulls Chris’ hand over Mark to embrace him, clasping his hand reassuringly. The hand leads his own into the darkness, and he sees two black, wide eyes staring back at him. His hand stops with the touch of warm, soft lips on his knuckles.

“Beth,” he whispers, and she flinches at his words. One slender index finger unravels from its clenched grasp, bouncing on her lips in a gesture meant to silence him. 

Her arm winds its way around Mark again, hand pressing into his chest, searching. Chris follows, holding her wrist with a feather like grip as he watches her hand crawl its way through the sheets slowly, precariously, almost as if too scared to disturb the delicate artwork of the swirling and shadowed lines of twisting linens. Her shyness is ever-present, so lovely and endearing in its hesitant and modest affection gestures, small yet infinitely meaningful; the peck of a faceplate, the soft shift of a food tray across the floor through a cracked doorway, the gentle meticulousness as her hands wrap around his spacesuit to strip him of it. Even now, the taciturn gaze of her big bright eyes pierce into him, gleaming with the spark of astounding intelligence and hidden wit, and shining with an aching sorrow.

Her hand stops, seeming to find what it was looking for. As his fingers trail up her wrist to find it, it is interrupted by rough skin. Chris almost jumps, still surprised at its presence even as Mark lies there between them, almost horrified as he feels its almost skeletal slenderness, his knuckles like cankerous bumps through his skin.

His chest squeezes, breath growing shaky. He swallows back the lump in his throat, offering Beth a watery smile over Mark’s head, one she struggles to steadily return. They will not cry over the life of Mark Watney, not when its tenaciousness had succeeded an almost impossible feat of survival, not when his heart is still beating and there is blood still rushing through his veins. Mark is a man of smiles, of laughter, and the two would gladly swallow down any selfish tears in order for that man’s same laughter to inspire the soul of the world.

It’s almost surreal to think that such laughter and strength could come from the man lying prone and weak between them, that a man so starved and small, so scarred and traumatized can still light up the room with a witty crack of a joke or the twitch of the lips in a smirk. For it to have still existed after the months he had been left alone was a miracle in itself.

Chris’ hand wraps its way around the two of them and squeezes tight. He feels Beth return it, Mark still sleeping soundly as their thumbs brush soft circles over the tendons and bones that make up his hand. Beth gives a soft nudge in her direction, tentative but effective, and Chris presses in, his arm winding over the pillows to twirl Beth’s dreads, Mark’s face deep enough into his shoulder that he can feel his warm breath against his skin. The soft breeze of it brings more comfort than any of them would want to admit.

Beth gives him another long stare, her eyes crinkling at the corners in what he thinks must be a smile before disappearing in what he thinks must be her closing her eyes, finally trying to whisk herself into restless sleep. He feels Beth’s grip grow slack, her breath even and in time with Mark’s.

Chris closes his own eyes as they burn with exhaustion, letting the melodic rhythm of their breath lull him into unconsciousness and the warmth of their bodies soothe him into a peace he never had while the three of them were apart.

**Author's Note:**

> First thing I've done for the Martian can I get a hell yeah.


End file.
